A Little More on Jalen Ramsey

If you haven't had a chance to check out the feature on Jalen Ramsey from this morning's paper, you can read it here.

One of the worst parts of writing a feature with space limitations is what ends up left out of the final story. I had a chance to talk to both of Jalen's parents and his high school defensive backs coach and there were plenty of other good tidbits and insights from those interviews. Fortunately, the Herald FSU blog is a great place to put a lot of that.

For instance, there wasn't much opportunity to talk about Ramsey's competitive nature, but he thrives in competition according to Jamie Redmon, his coach at Brentwood High:

“Jalen is a very, very competitive kid. In high school you would love to play man coverage and sometimes you can’t because you don’t have the confidence to do it, [but] from the time Jalen walked on campus we started playing man coverage almost every game," said Redmon.

"He’s just a phenomenal athlete because you know he has the size, the height, the arm-length but most of all he’s very competitive, the higher the stakes he’s going to play at that level. He’s just a tremendous athlete as well.”

Redmon also mentioned that Ramsey wants to lockdown the best player on the field, he's not interested in a matchup that gives him an easy game.

“He has tremendous confidence in his abilities, big time," Redmon added. "If I told him in the game ‘hey you’ve got their best receiver,’ he wants to challenge that receiver every down. There’s no doubt in my mind

“He loves going against someone that’s very good, he doesn’t shy away from competition, at all.”

Here are a few other tidbits:

##- Jalen's mother, Margie Tidwell, was highly confident he would start from day one:

“Jalen’s very confident and he’s always been that way, we had no doubts - his father and I - had no doubts that he would be starting if he continued to work," said Tidwell. "He worked hard during the Summer, he never stopped working out, he did what he had to do to prove himself so I had no doubts that he was going to start.”

##- Without going into too many details, you got the idea that the problems at USC under Lane Kiffin may have been as big a factor in Ramsey flipping his commitment in the 11th hour as Pruitt's late push was:

“That was solely his decision and something where he felt comfortable with Coach Fisher and Coach Pruitt who were recruiting [him],' said Tidwell. "So you know there were a couple factors but that was something he decided he wanted to do."

##- Jalen's favorite player growing up was Devin Hester:

“Devin Hester, he liked him more because he was so versatile," said Lamont Ramsey, Jalen's father. "He was a wide receiver and running back also while he was in high school and actually he was ranked pretty high as a wide receiver coming out of high school too. He just liked the versatility that Devin Hester had too.”

Ramsey can also return kicks, per both his father and Redmon.

##- And finally, Lamont may be more nervous than Jalen before every Florida State game:

“I’m real proud of him, very proud but I’m [also] nervous at the beginning of every game, I want him to do so well that you get nervous about it, but very proud of him.”

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